Preferred text setting / font settings for your documentary work?

Question

Hello All,
As I have shared before, I do documentary work for my organization (although I'm not a filmmaker by profession).
Yesterday, I was watching a documentary called, "Waging a Living". It is about people living on the economic margin. The documentary includes many scenes where there is information/text over picture.
An example would be, "One in four American workers — more than 30 million people — are stuck in jobs that pay less than the federal poverty level for a family of four."
Or, "Housing costs, to name just one of several essential living expenses, have tripled since 1979, (ii) while real wages for male low-wage workers are actually less than they were 30 years ago."
I noticed that the text was very easy to read. There was a bit of drop shadow which facilitated reading over anything white.
I got to thinking that there might be some standard approaches to text over picture that make thing readable.
Anyone care to share their favorite font, size, opacity, angle, color, softness, etc?
Thanks.
DG

Answer 1

Use Trajan as much as possible.
Wait. No. That's my schtick.
Never, ever use Trajan.
All kidding aside, sans serif is good. Slightly quirky sans serifs are better. I like Avenir for this. Avoid Futura unless you're trying to look like Wes Anderson trying to look like Stanley Kubrick. Not that that's always a bad thing.
Just go ahead and put a drop shadow on all your type. If it's over moving picture, it'll be a zillion times easier to scan. If it's over black, the shadow will be invisible.
Keep it short. I don't have any science to back this up, only my own subjective experiences. But when I'm watching a show — be it a Youtube video or a feature in the theater — I'm not really reading anything. I'm just scanning. Title cards are not the place to exercise your literary aspirations. Save that for Internet message boards. Ahem.